The period from the 1970s to the present day has produced an extraordinarily rich and diverse body of Caribbean writing that has been widely acclaimed. Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970-2020 traces the region's contemporary writings across the established genres of prose, poetry, fiction and drama into emerging areas of creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction with a particular attention on challenging the narrow canon of Anglophone male writers. It maps shifts and continuities between late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Caribbean literature in terms of innovations in literary form and style, the changing role and place of the writer, and shifts in our understandings of what constitutes the political terrain of the literary and its sites of struggle. Whilst reaching across language divides and multiple diasporas, it shows how contemporary Caribbean Literature has focused its attentions on social complexity and ongoing marginalizations in its continued preoccupations with identity, belonging and freedoms.
The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature offers a comprehensive, critically engaging overview of this increasingly significant body of work. The volume is divided into six sections that consider: the foremost figures of the Anglophone Caribbean literary tradition and a history of literary critical debate textual turning points, identifying key moments in both literary and critical history and bringing lesser known works into context fresh perspectives on enduring and contentious critical issues including the canon, nation, race, gender, popular culture and migration new directions for literary criticism and theory, such as eco-criticism, psychoanalysis and queer studies the material dissemination of Anglophone Caribbean literature and generic interfaces with film and visual art This volume is an essential text that brings together sixty-nine entries from scholars across three generations of Caribbean literary studies, ranging from foundational critical voices to emergent scholars in the field. The volume's reach of subject and clarity of writing provide an excellent resource and springboard to further research for those working in literature and cultural studies, postcolonial and diaspora studies as well as Caribbean studies, history and geography.
"The Caribbean has a powerful, modern tradition of fantastic literature that's on full display in this anthology of original fiction by writers from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Bermuda...None of these writers is likely to be familiar to American audiences, but all are worth getting to know. Readers who love the writing of Nalo Hopkinson, Tobias S. Buckell, and Lord herself will savor this volume." --Publishers Weekly, Starred review "New Worlds, Old Ways fulfills its promise of arriving at a recognizable genre of Caribbean speculative fiction. Prior to this collection we have not had any reader-friendly approaches that have directly addressed the genre of Caribbean speculative fiction. Lord, and the various writers in this collection, have given readers access to a hitherto unexplored genre, one that differentiates as well as connects to the treasure trove of Caribbean literature. The collection is a boon for scholars and reading aficionados of the Speculative Fiction genre. And as the editor states, true to its world, New Worlds, Old Ways offers both depth and delight without disappointment. It suggests tthat if one looks closely enough, they will find that Caribbean fiction has always been speculative." --SX Salon Do not be misled by the "speculative" in the title. Although there may be robots and fantastical creatures, these common symbols are tools to frame the familiar from fresh perspectives. Here you will find the recent past and ongoing present of government and society with curfews, crime, and corruption; the universal themes of family, growth and death, love and hate; the struggle to thrive when power is capricious and revenge too bittersweet. Here too is the passage of everything—old ways, places, peoples, and ourselves—leaving nothing behind but memories, histories, and stories. This anthology speaks to the fragility of our Caribbean home, but reminds the reader that although home may be vulnerable, it is also beautifully resilient. The voice of our literature declares that in spite of disasters, this people and this place shall not be wholly destroyed. Read for delight, then read for depth, and you will not be disappointed. Brand-new stories by: Tammi Browne-Bannister, Summer Edward, Portia Subran, Brandon O'Brien, Kevin Jared Hosein, Richard B. Lynch, Elizabeth J. Jones, Damion Wilson, Brian Franklin, Ararimeh Aiyejina, and H.K. Williams. New Worlds, Old Ways is the third publication of Peekash Press, an imprint of Akashic Books and Peepal Tree Press committed to supporting the emergence of new Caribbean writing, and as part of the CaribLit project.
A historiography of Caribbean literary history and criticism, the author explores different critical approaches and textual peepholes to re-examine the way twentieth-century Caribbean literature in English may be read and understood.
This book discusses an archival turn in the work of contemporary Caribbean writers and visual artists across linguistic locations and whose work engages critically with various historical narratives and colonial and postcolonial records. This refiguration opens a critical space and retells stories and histories previously occluded in/by those records, and in spaces of the public sphere. Through poetics and aesthetics of fragmentation largely influenced by music and popular culture, their work encourages contrapuntal ways of (re)thinking histories; ways that interrogate the influence of colonial narratives in processes of silencing but also centre the knowledge found in oral histories and other forms of artistic archives outside official repositories. Discussing literature and selected artwork by artists from Britain, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago, Memory and the Archival Turn in Caribbean Literature and Culture demonstrates the historiographical significance of artistic and cultural production.
This edited collection challenges a long sacrosanct paradigm. Since the establishment of Caribbean literary studies, scholars have exalted an elite cohort of émigré novelists based in postwar London, a group often referred to as “the Windrush writers” in tribute to the SS Empire Windrush, whose 1948 voyage from Jamaica inaugurated large-scale Caribbean migration to London. In critical accounts this group is typically reduced to the canonical troika of V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Sam Selvon, effectively treating these three authors as the tradition's founding fathers. These “founders” have been properly celebrated for producing a complex, anticolonial, nationalist literature. However, their canonization has obscured the great diversity of postwar Caribbean writers, producing an enduring but narrow definition of West Indian literature. Beyond Windrush stands out as the first book to reexamine and redefine the writing of this crucial era. Its fourteen original essays make clear that in the 1950s there was already a wide spectrum of West Indian men and women—Afro-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean, and white-creole—who were writing, publishing, and even painting. Many lived in the Caribbean and North America, rather than London. Moreover, these writers addressed subjects overlooked in the more conventionally conceived canon, including topics such as queer sexuality and the environment. This collection offers new readings of canonical authors (Lamming, Roger Mais, and Andrew Salkey); hitherto marginalized authors (Ismith Khan, Elma Napier, and John Hearne); and commonly ignored genres (memoir, short stories, and journalism).
This history for the first time charts the literature of the entire Caribbean, the islands as well as continental littoral, as one cultural region. It breaks new ground in establishing a common grid for reading literatures that have been kept separate by their linguistic frontiers. Readers will have access to the best current scholarship on the evolution of popular and literate cultures in the various regions since their earliest emergence. The History of Literature in the Caribbean brings together the most distinguished team of literary Caribbeanists ever assembled, cutting across ideological commitments and critical methods. Differences in point of view between individual contributors are left intact here as the sign of the colonial inheritance of the region. Introductions and conclusions to the various sections of the History written by the respective subeditors, set them in proper perspective. The unique synoptic aspect of the History lies in its comprehensiveness and its range, which are unequaled. Contributors: A. James Arnold, Julio Rodriguez-Luis, H. Lopez Morales, Maria Elena Rodriguez Castro, Silvio Torres Saillant, Seymour Menton, Ian I. Smart, Efrain Barradas, Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, Carlos Alonso, Ivan A. Schulman, W.L. Siemens, William Luis, Gustavo Pellon, Emilio Bejel, Sandra M. Cypess, Peter Earle, Adriana Mndez Rodenas, J. Michael Dash, Ulrich Fleischmann, Maximilien Laroche, Rgis Antoine, Lon-Franois Hoffmann, Randolph Hezekiah, Bridget Jones, F.I. Case, Marie-Denise Shelton, Beverly Ormerod, J. Michael Dash, Jack Corzani, Anthea Morrison, Juris Silenieks, Frantz Fanon, Vere Knight.
This collection takes as its starting point the ubiquitous representation of various forms of mental illness, breakdown and psychopathology in Caribbean writing, and the fact that this topic has been relatively neglected in criticism, especially in Anglophone texts, apart from the scholarship devoted to Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). The contributions to this volume demonstrate that much remains to be done in rethinking the trope of “madness” across Caribbean literature by local and diaspora writers. This book asks how focusing on literary manifestations of apparent mental aberration can extend our understanding of Caribbean narrative and culture, and can help us to interrogate the norms that have been used to categorize art from the region, as well as the boundaries between notions of rationality, transcendence and insanity across cultures.
Featuring poems from: Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, Danielle Jennings, Ruel Johnson, Monica Minott, Debra Providence, Shivanee Ramlochan, Colin Robinson, and Sassy Ross. With a preface by Kwame Dawes. With a generous sample from each poet, this anthology is an opportunity to discover some of the best, new, previously unpublished voices from the Caribbean. This is a generation that has absorbed Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, Martin Carter, and Lorna Goodison, while finding its own distinctive voice. Peekash Press is a collaboration between Akashic and UK-based publisher Peepal Tree Press, with a focus on publishing writers from and still living in the Caribbean. The debut title from Peekash, Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean, was published in 2014. Kwame Dawes is the author of eighteen collections of poetry, most recently Duppy Conqueror, as well as two novels, numerous anthologies, and plays. He has won Pushcart prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy, and was the 2013 awardee of the Paul Engel Prize. At the University of Nebraska--Lincoln, he is a Chancellor’s Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. Dawes is the associate poetry editor at Peepal Tree Press, the series editor of the University of South Carolina Poetry Series, and the founding director of the African Poetry Book Fund. Dawes also teaches in Pacific University’s MFA program, and is the director of the biennial Calabash International Literary Festival.
